Over the summer I took a class in American Sign Language. I was very impressed and enjoyed it a lot. It’s always been one of those skills I wanted to pick up (along with other languages, flying, etc.) so I finally did it. I have taken foreign language classes before, but always found them to [...]

While larger, the crowd has really changed. DefCon, overall, was much more subdued than in years past. To some degree, this was a necessity for DefCon to continue as some aspects were a out of control. For sure, money came and went from the scene, but it was still striking how the cDc’s presentation went from being nearly a rock concert to “hi, I’m with Cult of the Dead Cow. Here’s our presentation.”

There were also more women. Some of this is attributed us guys getting older and bringing significant others, but there were also quite a few women attending the show on their own. More power to you all. Bring your friends.

The Tax Commissioner’s office has finally linked up the insurance and emissions databases and allowed us to do the paperwork on-line. They did charge me a $4.60 fee, but usually there is a $1.00 mail-in fee anyway. The $3.60 is about what it would cost me to send it certified mail, so, since I’m running late this year it seemed to make sense.

This frog was on my driveway the other evening. His color pattern, when viewed from the top, looked so incredibly similar to a dried, fallen leaf that every time I see a leaf or a rock, I avoid stepping on it because it might be a frog.

Here is a page with about 200 news articles from my RSS reader. These are articles that have accumulated over the last year or so that I thought were neat enough to not delete. So, if you’ve ever wondered what kinds of things catch my attention, here’s a good sample.

In the midst of moving, I have misplaced the USB drive that reads the memory sticks from my camera. This means that I can’t really look at the Space Shuttle photos I took until I get a new one, find it, or borrow another one this weekend. It’s kind of retro to think I now [...]

I went to Cape Canaveral with a few friends. We figure there are only a few more shuttle launches left and the timing worked out well where we could take off a few days and be able to wait it out of there we any delays. As it turned out, there were several, but we [...]

Some friends and I are going to see the Space Shuttle Launch. Good information about seeing a launch is hard to find, so I think I might post these links to sites that I found useful.

A few friends and I saw the Al Gore An Inconvenient Truth film last night.

I think they did a good job explaining what global warming is and how we can use ice core samples to judge temperature and CO2 levels back thousands of years. While the film focuses on “consequences” of our inaction, Gore does remind us that there is plenty of time to act and that we have reversed our environmental damage before – the elimination of chlorofluorocarbons, for example.

The visuals do a good job keeping the audience’s attention, and I was excited to see them using an Apple computer. At the same time, there were several statistical flaws.

Whether you believe in global warming or not, I think it is easy to see that our society’s pollution is not a good thing. If you don’t understand what us environmentalists are talking about, seeing this film will help you understand our perspective. I recommend it, but you might want to wait for it to come out on DVD.

While lots of my time will be sucked up by moving, I do have a few goals for fun things I want to do this summer. If you think any of these are neat, you should join me. Let me know when you want to go: Tour the Georgia Dome – There is a “behind [...]